


i am here tonight

by sparxwrites



Series: peace beneath the city [7]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, Anxiety, Autistic!Lalna, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Bonding, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, References to Drugs, Urban Magic Yogs, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 14:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3695942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dad's mad at me, isn't he?”</p>
<p>Lalna jumps at the sudden words, head slipping off his hand where he'd fallen half-asleep, elbow slamming into the arm of the chair where it'd been resting and supporting his head. “Will!” he yelps, before forcing his voice down to something a little quieter, aware of the low murmur of voices outside the door to the bedroom. “Oh, um- you're awake-” </p>
<p>(In which Will has an... incident involving redstone and the garbage court, and Lalna ends up dealing with the fallout.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am here tonight

**Author's Note:**

> **anonymous asked:** Are you still taking requests, friend? Because Lalna, taking care of Will after the red stone incident, being very confused and possibly breaking Xephos' heart a little. More Lalna being adorable can never be bad right?
> 
> most of this was written 11km up in the air on a plane?? which is pretty cool. i didn’t actually mean to write this right now, but i did, so enjoy! it was weirdly soothing to write actually. also, lalna is autistic and i’ll fight anyone who disagrees.
> 
> **warnings** for mentions of drug use, aftermath of drug use, anxiety.

“Dad's mad at me, isn't he?”

Lalna jumps at the sudden words, head slipping off his hand where he'd fallen half-asleep, elbow slamming into the arm of the chair where it'd been resting and supporting his head. “Will!” he yelps, before forcing his voice down to something a little quieter, aware of the low murmur of voices outside the door to the bedroom. “Oh, um- you're awake-” He rubs his elbow slowly, ignoring the fuzzy pain radiating up towards his shoulder and down into his fingers in favour of staring anxiously at his cousin. “Um...”

“So mad,” mutters Will, seemingly oblivious to Lalna's words, blinking dazedly up at the ceiling and gripping the bedsheets tight enough his knuckles turn white. He doesn't look any better for being awake – eyes still bloodshot and bruised, pain creased deep into the lines of his face, breathing laboured and uneven. “He's gonna be so mad...”

Over in the corner, the radio flicks on and blasts static for several seconds before whining into silence. Smoke curls up through the gaps in the pastic casing.

“I, um, Xephos? I don't think he's mad,” hazards Lalna, blinking between Will and the radio with mild concern. He doesn't comment on the fact he's never heard Will call Xephos _dad_ before. “Not at you, anyway. Garbage court, uh, that's a different matter.” He giggles nervously, briefly, before shutting his mouth with a sharp click of teeth when he remembers that's probably not an appropriate response.

Will twitches at the name, grabbing even tighter to the sheets, and Lalna backtracks quickly when the light overhead flickers. “But! But that's Kirin's- he's doing something- I- don't worry about it. I'm sure they're dealing with it.” He rubs palms over his thighs, wincing when the voices outside the door peak suddenly into Honeydew's muffled shouting before Lomadia cuts across him. “Um...”

“Kirin?” asks Will, the name an alarmed rasp, and groans quietly when Lalna nods. “Oh, gods.” He squeezed his eyes shut, teeth gritted and one hand unclenching from the sheets to tap against the side of his thigh. “Fuck, fuck, fuck-” He cuts off, coughing, and Lalna starts.

“I'm-” he tries, and then bites down on _sure it's fine_ , because he's not sure it's fine at all. In fact, he’s fairly sure this whole situation is incredibly _far_ from fine. “D'you- there's some water-” He stands up to pick the glass up off the bedside table, hovering anxiously.

“Not thirsty,” rasps Will, when the coughs stop, shaking his head. He turns his face away until Lalna sets the glass back down onto the table with a small sigh.

Settling back into the chair at a quiet loss for words, Lalna drags a hand through his hair, before fishing in his pocket for a hairband when he realises it's still loose from where he tugged it out earlier. He ties it up, humming softly, unconsciously, concentrating on the simple, familiar motion to try and calm himself.

The lights flicker again, and Will's nose begins to bleed, a slow trickle of red that drips across the greyish skin of his cheek and down onto the white of his pillow. It blooms like flowers on the fabric, spreading out russet-red, and Lalna starts chewing at the corner of one nail already bitten short enough to be painful as he stares. “Um. Do you want me to...?”

When he doesn't get an answer, he sighs, hauls himself out of the chair again and crosses the room to grab the box of tissues on top of Will's dresser. “There you go,” he says, setting them down on the bedside table and offering one to Will. “For you, uh, your nose.”

He doesn't get a thank you, any kind of verbal acknowledgement, but Will takes the tissue and holds it to his nose, shuffling on the bed so he's a little more propped up on the headboard with his eyes closed. Lalna settles down into his chair again, fidgeting, wishing he had something to do with his hands. The urge to bite his nails rises again, and he doesn't have the concentration to fight it off, chewing on the corner of one thumbnail absently.

Outside the door, voices are raised again, and this time Lalna's fairly sure it's Xephos yelling shrill and unintelligible for several seconds. When the words cut off, it's with something that sounds suspiciously like a sob, and Lalna flinches.

“...They're arguing about me, aren't they?” asks Will, sounding beyond exhausted, voice flat and empty and rasping. He still hasn't opened his eyes again.

Lalna doesn't see much point in lying – he never does. “Yeah,” he says, quietly. “They've, uh. Been at it for an hour or so now. Dad, mum, Lom... Lom sent Nilesy home once you-” He breaks off, clears his throat awkwardly, and winces when Will cracks an eye open to stare at him. “...When you stoppped seizing,” he mumbles, all in a rush, digging fingers into this thigh to try and calm himself. “Um, Kirin was there, but he left like, ten minutes ago? I think he's gone to- I'm not sure- He was talking about a Hunt but-”

Groaning softly, Will turns his head into the pillow likes he thinks he can suffocate himself in it.

“-but I think Xephos talked him out of it! Or Dew. Or. Or someone.” One of the voices outside the door, when it had gotten loud enough to be audible, had sounded very enthusiastic about the prospect. Lalna hadn't been exactly sure what a Hunt entailed, but from the vicious pleasure audble in Kirin's low rumble, he'd suspected it wasn't anything good.

“It wasn't their fault,” mutters Will, quietly. “It was- I fucked up. They- I mean, they gave it to me, but they- it's not like they pinned me down and-” He cuts himself off, making a low noise in his throat that Lalna can't quite interpret. “They- they- oh _gods_...”

For a long moment, he looks like he's about to be sick.

“It's okay,” says Lalna, vaguely, because he feels like he should, half-remembers Honeydew and Lomadia saying similar things to Xephos. When the words have no effect, he rubs his palms on his jeans again, huffs out an anxious noise. “Can I... get you anything?” That's a favourite of Xephos', usually followed up by _I'll get you some tea, that'll help_.

Unhelpfully, Will says nothing, just presses his face further into the pillow. His shoulders are shaking a little, thin trembles that Lalna almost doesn't notice, and they make something deep in his chest ache. He wants to fix this, _needs_ to fix this, but he has no idea how.

Hovering a hand over Will's shoulder for a moment, he snatches it back before he builds up the courage to actually touch him, swallowing hard. “Can I- uh, um, uh-” He catches himself, forces himself to slow down. “Tea? Would, um, would tea help? Or- or painkillers, or- a blanket, or- or, uh, um...” He trails off, slowly, having exhausted the list of things he usually offers Xephos or Honeydew if there's something wrong and having offered the only one of his personal pick-me-ups he thinks Will might appreciate.

“No painkillers,” mutters Will, sounding faintly horrified at the thought of any more chemicals inside him. “Not thirsty.” His words are muffled by the pillow, still, face hidden in it.

“So... blanket?” asks Lalna, hesitantly, unsure whether a lack of objection constitutes a yes. When Will doesn't respond, he sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck. “...I'll get you a blanket,” he decides, eyes flicking to the back of Will's head and then down to the floor. “Just. Stay there, okay?”

He winces as he darts out the room, shaking his head at how stupid _stay there_ sounds, when even breathing seems to be costing Will dearly right now. Hunching his shoulders, he catches the frayed ends of his sleeves between his fingers and the heels of his palms, worrying at them with the bitten-ragged edges of his nails – before freezing as raised voices float up through the stairwell from the floor below.

“...still unconscious up there! Goddess _only_ knows what it's done to him, I mean- what if-” Xephos breaks off with a low, wounded noise as Honeydew's deeper, soothing tones started up, too quiet for Lalna to understand.

For a second, Lalna wonders if he should go down there, tell them that Will is awake. It was what Lomadia had asked him to do, after all, when she'd left him sitting at Will's bedside to go and sort out what had devolved into Xephos shouting at an increasingly impatient and offended Kirin, and Honeydew doing little to try and restrain him.

But then he thinks of Will hollow-eyed and trembling on the bed, of the sharp-edged guilt and regret tightening the edges of his words, of the anxious tapping against his thigh. What Will needs right now is rest, a chance to recover, to let the last of the drug pass out of his system.

Stomach twisting uncomfortably at the lie-by-omission, no matter how necessary it is – and how unlikely it is that anyone downstairs cares, given the wrenching sobs that have started to drift up the stairs – Lalna resists the urge to press his hands over his ears and instead hurries down the hall as quietly as he can.

The door to his room is open, blanket folded neatly on the end of his bed where he'd left it this morning. It's about the only part of his room that is neat, but he doesn't care about that right now. Grabbing the blanket off the bed and clutching it to his chest, he heads back to Will's room as quickly as he can, trying not to listen to the noises from downstairs.

“Xephos is crying,” says Will, softly, when Lalna slips back in. It's not a question.

Reprimanding himself quietly for leaving the door ajar, Lalna nods, catching his lip between his teeth and worrying it until he tastes copper blood on his tongue. “Yeah,” he says, eventually, after tugging the door shut behind him with a click. “But he'll- it's- he, um, needs to. I think. It's- a thing. He'll- be okay.”

He sets the blanket down on the end of Will's bed without saying anything else, focusing on unfolding it and tugging it up to cover Will up to his chest to avoid having to speak. It's heavy, unwieldy, soft from use but made a little stiff by the weights – but he gets it to settle, in the end, squared up to the lines of the bed and smooth over Will's still form. “Good?”

“Honestly?” asks Will, quietly, an empty sort of despair in his voice. “Honestly? No.” He sighs, and then seems to relent a little, some of the tension slipping out of his shoulders and face. “...But the blanket helps. Thanks.”

“It's fine.” Lalna smiles, hesitantly, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Glad- glad I could help?” When Will manages a slight twist of the lips back, Lalna relaxes a little. “Anything, uh, else I can do to help?”

For a long moment, Will's silent, one hand slipping up to fiddle with the hem of the weighted blanket tucked under his chin. “...Stay with me?” he asks, eventually, unable to meet Lalna's eye. “Please. I-” He exhales shakily, closing his eyes, fingers white-knuckling on the edge of the blanket. “Gods...”

Impulsively, Lalna reaches out, catching Will's fingers and carefully prying them off the blanket. “Okay,” agrees, simply, knotting their fingers together and feeling his ears heat a little at the small noise of surprise Will makes at the physical contact. He gropes behind him for the chair, instead of thinking about the fact that he's just voluntarily touched Will skin-to-skin for what might be the first time. “Okay, I- I can, uh, I can do that.”

He finally catches the edge of the chair, tugs it forward so he can sit next to Will's bed without letting go of Will's hand. Settling down into it, he swallows hard, lips twitching into a half-smile despite the way he's carefully not meeting Will's eye. “I can do that,” he repeats, quieter and little more firmly, thumb brushing over the back of Will's hand.

 


End file.
